“We’re very close to the edge in New England,” van Welie told lawmakers. “We need to find a way of relieving this constraint one way or another. Either through investment in the pipeline infrastructure, or continued investments in other sources of energy that will take the pressure off the gas pipeline, or reducing demand on the system.”

Van Welie told senators in 2013 more gas pipes were needed to solve the problem.

Several attempts to do that failed, and today, van Welie said expanded capacity is unlikely to happen in the near future.

“We have a gas system where the business model is completely different from the electric system,” van Welie said. “That leads to a situation where you don’t have a customer for the incremental pipeline investments needed to serve the gas generation. I think that’s a problem we’re going to struggle with for a while.”

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